Composer Desmond Child: Gay people can be parents, too

Miami composer Desmond Child had one of his biggest hits with Ricky Martin’s 1999 worldwide smash, Livin’ la Vida Loca. Now nearly 60, Child’s personal life has become anything but.

He and Curtis Shaw, partners for 24 years, live in suburban Nashville where they’re raising twin sons, born almost 11 years ago at Mount Sinai Medical Center in Miami Beach. The boys are the subject of a new documentary, TWO: The Story of Roman and Nyro,which premieres Tuesday at the 15th annual Miami Gay & Lesbian Film Festival.

“Why did we do it?” Child asks rhetorically about authorizing such a personal film. “We felt it was a way we could help straight people understand — and have gay people see that it is possible — that they could live and be parents and have that kind of joy in their lives.”

Child and Shaw had been together about a dozen years when they decided to start a family.

“I had been watching the news,” Child recalls. “George Bush was trying to kill the gay marriages and what not. He went on TV and says, ‘I don’t know why they want to get married. They can’t have children.’

“Well, people who are infertile still want to get married. Should that bar them from getting married? We’renot infertile. Wecan have children. We arehaving children. There are thousands of children being born biologically to gay parents. It’s not just about adopting.”

The same argument could be heard in March during gay-marriage hearings before the U.S. Supreme Court, says Child, 59. “Why don’t they stop talking about procreation? We’re procreating! End of discussion America!”

Born in Gainesville and raised in Miami Beach, Child has been out of the closet since 1979, when his band at the time, Desmond Child & Rouge, released its second album, Runners in the Night. One track, The Truth Comes Out, “was my exuberant coming-out song,” he says.

He soon shifted from performing to composing, and has written and produced huge hits for Martin, Bon Jovi ( Livin’ on a Prayer), Cher ( We All Sleep Alone) and Joan Jett ( I Hate Myself for Loving You).

In 1989, Child met Shaw, then an aspiring actor from Columbia, Mo., working as a maitre d’ in a New York City restaurant. Soon a couple, they moved to California and later Miami Beach. They broke up in the late ’90s, reuniting a year later.

“After the reconciliation, we said, ‘Let’s do this, let’s have the family we always wanted,’ ” Child recalls.

They worked with Miami Beach family lawyer Elizabeth Schwartz and Growing Generations, a Los Angeles company that helps gay men become parents.

The son of Cuban singer Elena Casals, who died last year, Child says he himself came from “an alternative family.” At 18, he learned that his biological father was not the man married to his mother when he was born in 1953.

It was “very important to me to have my own biological children,” he says.

Shaw, one of four sons of a conservative Christian mother and a school-superintendent father, says a biological connection didn’t matter to him.

“I just knew before it even happened, before we became parents, it wouldn’t make any difference. I would love the child and he would love me,” says Shaw, who adopted the boys in California and has been their stay-at-home dad.

“It’s just so pure. As soon as you hold a baby in your arms, how could you not bond? Biology doesn’t make a difference. No paper would legitimize what I already felt inside. I already knew I was these kids’ parent.”

Child and Shaw selected eggs from an anonymous donor and asked their close friend Angela Whittaker to be gestational surrogate. On the second attempt, she became pregnant with two implanted embryos.

Roman and Nyro Child were born May 8, 2002, in Miami Beach. Child (“Daddy”) and Shaw (“Papa”) decided to raise the boys in Tennessee — “the belt buckle of the Bible Belt,” Shaw says.

“He’s made the sacrifice to let us be where we want to be,” Shaw says of Child. “I prefer Nashville to anywhere else we’ve lived. The kids do, too. It’s easier, people are nice. If I’m less stressed out, things run more smoothly.”

The family lives on “eight acres we’ve collected over the years,” Shaw says. “The kids share a room, they’re in the same class at school and the same soccer team. Both take guitar and piano lessons and Spanish lessons.”

The dads and their sons remain close to Whittaker and her mother. “We believe we’re part of the same family,” Shaw says.

From the start, Child, Shaw and Whittaker documented their journey on video. These “home movies” became the basis for the documentary.

“Being handed 300 hours of footage is a daunting challenge to say the least,” says TWO director and producer Heather Winters, who also grew up in Miami Beach.

In a central scene, superstar singer Jon Bon Jovi, one of the boys’ two godfathers, blesses the babies in 2002 by reading a poem he wrote called Two, from which the documentary takes its title.

Winters, the mother of two sons, ages 7 and 15, says she’s impressed with Shaw and Child’s parenting skills.

“They’re raising their children the way I hope all parents raise their children, the way I raised my two boys. To realize that people are different and there’s no one way to love or do things,” the filmmaker says. “That’s what makes life and being human so important. That’s one of the universal messages of our film.

“It’s about a modern family, but it’s about the ultimate triumph of love,” she says. “There have been other films about gay dads. What makes it different is that I wanted to tell it from the perspective of the children.”

Nyro and Roman are bright, precocious and a bit uncomfortable promoting the film.

“Too many questions,” Nyro says. “No offense, but I don’t like being interviewed.”

Roman thinks the film is “pretty cool” and so is its message: “Everybody has rights. They should just be inspired by this movie. People say gay parents can’t have children, and we proved them wrong.”